About · Who wrote this site
About James Roberts
I drank every day for twenty-seven years. I came out of residential treatment on a Thursday. The hardest weeks were the ones nobody had warned me about. This network exists because what was written about the months after rehab was almost nothing at all.
If you are reading this, you are probably in the days or weeks after a discharge — yours, or someone you love. I was. I am writing discharge.guide because the cliff after rehab is the part the marketing brochures skip, and it is where most of the damage happens.
The dates
I was born in Manchester in February 1976. I am 50.
My parents were strict. I did not drink before university. I made up for it after.
From 18 to 45 — every day. Some days a glass. Most days a bottle. Some days more. Twenty-seven years.
I was a functioning alcoholic. I ran a headhunting firm of twenty staff, placing executives across travel and hospitality, in offices and hotel bars from London to Dubai to Cape Town. I made money. I kept friends. I drank through all of it.
Functioning alcoholism is a major issue for my generation. Most of us are still drinking. Some of us are dead. A few of us got out.
June 2020
I went into Delamere in Cheshire in June 2020. Four weeks residential. Medical detox, then the rest of it.
I have not had a drink since.
I am not going to write a redemption arc here. Rehab is not a cure. It bought me a structured month away from alcohol with people who knew what they were doing. The work was after.
The medical detox was not optional. Stopping a twenty-seven-year drinking habit without medical supervision can kill you. Seizures, delirium tremens, cardiac complications. Detox without medical supervision can kill. So can the first weeks after. The page on dangerous withdrawal signs on sober.guide explains why, with sources.
Tenerife
In December 2020 I moved to Tenerife and bought a finca outside Icod de los Vinos. I called it Casa Salvia — salvia is sage in Spanish. I burnt sage in the mornings.
Casa Salvia ran as a 9.7-rated BnB for several years. I hosted guests in recovery from many walks of life. I ran sober golf events. I sold the BnB recently.
I do not currently live in the UK. My clothes are still in a house in Scotland I have not been back to. My ex-husband has visited me here. He has supported me through this in a way no money could buy. Genuine love. That part of the story is not finished.
Why this site exists
In the first year of sobriety I started understanding what nobody had told me about the months after discharge. The week-three-looks-fine illusion. The fourth-week collapse. The aftercare that was sold and never showed up. I had been the buyer rehabs want, and the honest information about what came next was almost completely missing.
I had money. I had panic. I had a family who wanted me fixed. I read everything. Most of what I read was written by people selling something — a rehab bed, a programme, a book, a sponsorship pipeline.
The honest information existed. It was buried. NICE guidelines, peer-reviewed papers, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, NHS pages. Not optimised for Google. Not written for someone in week one. And almost none of it was written for the partner watching it from across the kitchen.
Writing the honest version where the buying happens is the whole point of this network.
This site is one door of several. Each one is written for a single moment rather than for the whole subject, because the useful answer on the day you are deciding whether to go is not the useful answer on day eleven at home. This one is the door for after.
Each door has an AI guide. It will not invent a clinic, a telephone number or a price. The sourced reference pages are written in plain English with sources you can check, and they are published once in this network rather than reprinted on every site in it.
What I am not
I am not a doctor. I am not a therapist. I am not a counsellor. I am not in recovery as a profession.
I am a man who drank for twenty-seven years, stopped, and built the resource I wish had existed in June 2020 — for me, and for the people who lived with me.
If you need medical advice, see a doctor. If today has become an emergency, the safety routes on this site are never gated and never will be.
How this is funded
This network is independent. No rehab pays me. No broker pays me. No referral fee comes to me from any clinic mentioned anywhere on these sites.
The guide on this site is funded by network membership, bought and managed at the network console, because running it costs money. That is the entire commercial relationship and it is with the reader rather than with the industry this site writes about. The safety routes and everything written on these pages are free and stay free.
If a clinic ever pays for placement, the page will say so at the top in plain English. That has not happened and is not planned.
The line
I am unique. But this is the truth.
We all are.
— James Roberts
Manchester, by way of Cheshire, Tenerife, and a few other places. Last reviewed April 2026. Nothing on this page is medical advice.